Back in 2014 when I was obsessed with weight loss, I stumbled across an article by Sadhguru on yoga and weight loss. This was the time I was beginning to get interested in yoga, thanks to my yogasana practices. I had already read “Light on Yoga” by BKS Iyengar and a few other articles/books from other yogasana masters. But entire books couldn’t entice me like this short article by Sadhguru.
By this time, I had also read the book “Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master” by Sri M and “Himalayan Masters” by Swami Rama. I was simply amazed by the experiences recorded by them. So naturally, I was inclined to research more on these things. Since childhood, I was always awed about the alternative healing methods, techniques such as palmistry, face reading, reiki and such (don’t confuse with superstition, I’m not a superstitious person). I was always reading about these things without really knowing what I was looking for. In school when we were introduced to yogasanas, I used to do them simply for the sake of it without any interest whatsoever. So now, after reading “Apprenticed…” I spent a lot more time researching yoga and meditation and spirituality. It was then that I knew what I was looking for. It was “yoga” (not yogasana, yogasana is just one of the limbs of yoga). I was looking for “yoga”. Eureka moment. It was then that my association with Sadhguru cemented further. Because during the course of my research, I would somehow almost always end up at Sadhguru’s blogs or videos. He simplified the whole thing with such ease, it was just super.
Fascinated by these books, I started meditation whenever possible. Here I am speaking about the “act of doing meditation”, not “being meditative”. This wasn’t regular; 5 minutes one day, 20 minutes 5 days later… I would consider myself lucky if I found 2 days in a row to meditate. Then one day I sat for meditation for 45 minutes and I immediately developed sinus. I did not know what it was at the time, but when the pain did not subside even 3 days later I ran to the dentist saying I had a bad tooth ache on my right side. Every symptom he stated, I had it – dizziness and imbalance as if water had entered one ear, bad persistent headache in my temples, blocked nose. It had nothing to do with my teeth. A month later, this happened again and that’s when I realized that it was due to meditation. I did not venture into long-duration meditation after that, or rather I never got the opportunity to experiment. Not that I wanted to, either :P.
So, coming back to Sadhguru… What he said made so much sense and I could relate to what he said. I knew what he was talking about since I’d had, in my life, my brush with "yoga" more than once. These episodes were brief and years apart but the joy I felt then still lingers, its kind of surreal and dreamy and yet very real. Or rather, what is happening in my life now is a result of what happened during these “episodes”. Before I knew it I was drawn to Sadhguru like nothing and no one before. Almost all the beliefs, or rather the non-beliefs I had or arrived at, he was saying it. And he went further crushing the other parts of me and my mind, and not once did it feel like he was doing it. I couldn’t help but think, “where were you all this while?”, “Why did you not come into my life earlier?” At first, it was just a few articles/videos now and then. But slowly my cooking, cleaning times that were spent dancing to the songs playing on the radio and grimacing at the idiotic ads that played in between, were replaced by Sadhguru’s videos. It was so soothing to hear his voice. Over the months, I was very deeply touched by Sadhguru. Little things started happening around me, some of them as simple as finding the answer to a question that arose in my mind. Sometimes it happened within minutes (like the next video in the auto playlist), sometimes it took a few days but my questions were always answered. These were just some random queries about life in general, nothing that did not let me sleep. But these little things impacted me in a huge way. So as a natural consequence of that I was drawn to him. For the record, I’m not drawn to “holy” men/women normally. Even though I had read Sri M and Swami Rama and bits and pieces of Osho, I was never attracted to them. But there was something in Sadhguru that drew me towards him.
In Oct 2015, we went on a trip to Vagamon. I wanted to go to Coimbatore to visit/spend some time at the Dhyanalinga. We decided that we will visit the place on our return trip. We took a different route for the onward journey and came via Coimbatore during our return trip. We knew nothing about the Dhyanalinga at the time other than the fact that Sadhguru built it. We reached there at around 1:00 PM and the Devi temple was closed at the time. Fortunately, the Dhyanalinga was open and we were able to spend 10-15 minutes inside the Dhyanalinga hall with much disturbance from Fearless. We were actually surprised that they allowed him inside the Dhyanalinga at all. We even asked a volunteer if it was ok to take him inside for which she answered in the affirmative. But Fearless was quite restless and curious, hence I only got less than 5 minutes to sit undisturbed. And whoa, what a wonderful experience I had!! So peaceful yet so powerful and instantaneous. It was mindblowing. I had been to the Pyramid Valley in Bangalore but I had never felt this way before. After coming back home I spent an entire day reading/exploring the Dhyanalinga website. Whoa…who knew!!!
After the Dhyanalinga experience my “relationship” (if I may call it that), with Sadhguru grew manifold to madness. No matter what I was thinking, my mind seemed to come back to Sadhguru. If, in a day, I did not watch at least one of his videos, I could not sleep. Yup, sheer madness. I knew I had found my “guru”. I was sure I was changing for the better. But I did not know if I was going back to being how I was or moving forward to being a completely different person… There was only one way to find out – wait and see.
PS: Last month, in the middle of my work, I suddenly remembered where I had seen Sadhguru before. Long ago when I was in college, we had subscribed to “The Hindu” for a year. Except for that year, I have never picked any newspaper before or after in my life. His articles used to appear in the “Speaking Tree” supplement. I always used to read the short zen stories on the page, which, more than half the time was “overhead transmission”. Not once did I read Sadhguru’s articles. But I do remember smirking – “Sadhguru! Seriously? Someone would call himself Sadhguru?” Thinking back, I think he did try to get my attention then and I completely missed. And even if I were to read his articles then, being a completely different person then, I would have missed him any which way. Also, he is famous, like really famous. And I completely missed him all this time. Maybe he chose this time, now, to come into my life, because he thought I was ready. And that’s just perfect :).
Continue to Inner Engineering : The beginning.
By this time, I had also read the book “Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master” by Sri M and “Himalayan Masters” by Swami Rama. I was simply amazed by the experiences recorded by them. So naturally, I was inclined to research more on these things. Since childhood, I was always awed about the alternative healing methods, techniques such as palmistry, face reading, reiki and such (don’t confuse with superstition, I’m not a superstitious person). I was always reading about these things without really knowing what I was looking for. In school when we were introduced to yogasanas, I used to do them simply for the sake of it without any interest whatsoever. So now, after reading “Apprenticed…” I spent a lot more time researching yoga and meditation and spirituality. It was then that I knew what I was looking for. It was “yoga” (not yogasana, yogasana is just one of the limbs of yoga). I was looking for “yoga”. Eureka moment. It was then that my association with Sadhguru cemented further. Because during the course of my research, I would somehow almost always end up at Sadhguru’s blogs or videos. He simplified the whole thing with such ease, it was just super.
Fascinated by these books, I started meditation whenever possible. Here I am speaking about the “act of doing meditation”, not “being meditative”. This wasn’t regular; 5 minutes one day, 20 minutes 5 days later… I would consider myself lucky if I found 2 days in a row to meditate. Then one day I sat for meditation for 45 minutes and I immediately developed sinus. I did not know what it was at the time, but when the pain did not subside even 3 days later I ran to the dentist saying I had a bad tooth ache on my right side. Every symptom he stated, I had it – dizziness and imbalance as if water had entered one ear, bad persistent headache in my temples, blocked nose. It had nothing to do with my teeth. A month later, this happened again and that’s when I realized that it was due to meditation. I did not venture into long-duration meditation after that, or rather I never got the opportunity to experiment. Not that I wanted to, either :P.
So, coming back to Sadhguru… What he said made so much sense and I could relate to what he said. I knew what he was talking about since I’d had, in my life, my brush with "yoga" more than once. These episodes were brief and years apart but the joy I felt then still lingers, its kind of surreal and dreamy and yet very real. Or rather, what is happening in my life now is a result of what happened during these “episodes”. Before I knew it I was drawn to Sadhguru like nothing and no one before. Almost all the beliefs, or rather the non-beliefs I had or arrived at, he was saying it. And he went further crushing the other parts of me and my mind, and not once did it feel like he was doing it. I couldn’t help but think, “where were you all this while?”, “Why did you not come into my life earlier?” At first, it was just a few articles/videos now and then. But slowly my cooking, cleaning times that were spent dancing to the songs playing on the radio and grimacing at the idiotic ads that played in between, were replaced by Sadhguru’s videos. It was so soothing to hear his voice. Over the months, I was very deeply touched by Sadhguru. Little things started happening around me, some of them as simple as finding the answer to a question that arose in my mind. Sometimes it happened within minutes (like the next video in the auto playlist), sometimes it took a few days but my questions were always answered. These were just some random queries about life in general, nothing that did not let me sleep. But these little things impacted me in a huge way. So as a natural consequence of that I was drawn to him. For the record, I’m not drawn to “holy” men/women normally. Even though I had read Sri M and Swami Rama and bits and pieces of Osho, I was never attracted to them. But there was something in Sadhguru that drew me towards him.
In Oct 2015, we went on a trip to Vagamon. I wanted to go to Coimbatore to visit/spend some time at the Dhyanalinga. We decided that we will visit the place on our return trip. We took a different route for the onward journey and came via Coimbatore during our return trip. We knew nothing about the Dhyanalinga at the time other than the fact that Sadhguru built it. We reached there at around 1:00 PM and the Devi temple was closed at the time. Fortunately, the Dhyanalinga was open and we were able to spend 10-15 minutes inside the Dhyanalinga hall with much disturbance from Fearless. We were actually surprised that they allowed him inside the Dhyanalinga at all. We even asked a volunteer if it was ok to take him inside for which she answered in the affirmative. But Fearless was quite restless and curious, hence I only got less than 5 minutes to sit undisturbed. And whoa, what a wonderful experience I had!! So peaceful yet so powerful and instantaneous. It was mindblowing. I had been to the Pyramid Valley in Bangalore but I had never felt this way before. After coming back home I spent an entire day reading/exploring the Dhyanalinga website. Whoa…who knew!!!
After the Dhyanalinga experience my “relationship” (if I may call it that), with Sadhguru grew manifold to madness. No matter what I was thinking, my mind seemed to come back to Sadhguru. If, in a day, I did not watch at least one of his videos, I could not sleep. Yup, sheer madness. I knew I had found my “guru”. I was sure I was changing for the better. But I did not know if I was going back to being how I was or moving forward to being a completely different person… There was only one way to find out – wait and see.
PS: Last month, in the middle of my work, I suddenly remembered where I had seen Sadhguru before. Long ago when I was in college, we had subscribed to “The Hindu” for a year. Except for that year, I have never picked any newspaper before or after in my life. His articles used to appear in the “Speaking Tree” supplement. I always used to read the short zen stories on the page, which, more than half the time was “overhead transmission”. Not once did I read Sadhguru’s articles. But I do remember smirking – “Sadhguru! Seriously? Someone would call himself Sadhguru?” Thinking back, I think he did try to get my attention then and I completely missed. And even if I were to read his articles then, being a completely different person then, I would have missed him any which way. Also, he is famous, like really famous. And I completely missed him all this time. Maybe he chose this time, now, to come into my life, because he thought I was ready. And that’s just perfect :).
Continue to Inner Engineering : The beginning.
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