The First Yogi: By Sadhguru

(International Yoga Day Special)

In the yogic culture, Shiva is not seen as a God, he is the Adiyogi, the first yogi. Over 15,000 years ago, Adiyogi appeared and went into intense ecstatic dance upon the Himalayas. When his ecstasy allowed him some movement, he danced wildly. When it became beyond movement, he became utterly still.

People saw that he was experiencing something that nobody had known before, something that they were unable to fathom. So interest developed and people came, wanting to know what this was. People came, waited and left because the man was oblivious to other people’s presence. He was either in intense dance or absolute stillness, completely oblivious to what was happening around him. Only seven people hung on. These seven people were insistent that they must learn from him, but Shiva ignored them. They pleaded and begged him, “Please, we want to know what you know.” Shiva dismissed them and said, “You fools, the way you are, you are not going to know in a million years, get lost! You need to prepare. There is a tremendous amount of preparation needed for this. This is not entertainment.”

 

So they started preparing. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, they prepared. He just chose to ignore them. One day, after eighty-four years of sadhana, on the summer solstice, the Adiyogi looked at these seven people and saw that they had become shining receptacles of knowing. They were absolutely ripe to receive.

 

He could not ignore them anymore. They grabbed his attention. He watched them closely till the next full moon rose, and decided to become a guru. That full moon day is known as Guru Purnima because the Adiyogi transformed himself into the Adi Guru – the first guru was born on that day, and the transmission of yogic science started. This is the science of understanding the human mechanism, to be able to dismantle or put it together. This transmission started and it went on for a long period of time. When, after many years of transmission, it was complete and it had produced seven fully enlightened beings, the Adiyogi said, “It’s no use for all of you to go down South. One will do for your race. The rest go elsewhere and spread this across the world.”

 

So one went to Central Asia, another went to the Middle East and North African region, another went to South America, another stayed right there, another went to the lower regions of Himalayas, another went to Eastern Asia and another who is very important to us, travelled south. The one who travelled south into the southern peninsula is of greatest significance to us because he is Agastya Muni.

 

When we say “south,” anything south of the Himalayas is “south.” He came south and made the spiritual process a part of everybody’s life. They say he did not spare a single human habitation in the subcontinent. He made sure every human habitation in the region was touched, not as a teaching but by making the spiritual process a part of their life. You can still find the remnants of his work in every family in this country who are unknowingly doing some kind of yoga in distorted forms. If you look carefully at your own family, the way you sit, the way you do things, whatever is being done traditionally are the remnants of Agastya’s work.

 

“…and now, Yoga”

Patanjali is known as the father of modern yoga. He did not invent yoga. Yoga was already there in various forms, which he assimilated into a system. Adiyogi had the highest understanding of human nature, but he didn’t put anything down in writing. He was too wild to be a scholar. He found it was too difficult to put everything he knew into one person, so he chose seven people and put different aspects of yoga into them. These became the seven basic forms of yoga. Even today, though these have branched off into hundreds of systems, yoga has still maintained seven distinct forms.

 

Patanjali came much later. He saw that it was getting too diversified and complex for anyone to understand in any meaningful way. So he assimilated and included all aspects into a certain format – as the Yoga Sutras. Sutra literally means a thread. Or in modern language we can say it is like a formula. Anyone who knows the English alphabet, even a kindergarten child can say E=mc², but there is an enormous amount of science behind that little formula, which most people do not understand. The sutras are like this, in thread form.

 

The yoga sutras are probably the greatest document on life and the most uninteresting book on the planet. Patanjali wrote it like this intentionally because the idea is that this is a formula to open up life. He did not want it to become a philosophy. And his mastery over language was such that he wrote it in the form of formulas, in such a way that no scholar would ever be interested in it. It is most uninteresting but if one sutra becomes a reality within you, it will explode you into a completely new dimension of experience. If you read one and make it true in your life, that’s all; you don’t have to read all the sutras.

 

Patanjali starts these yoga sutras in a very strange way. The first sutra is just this – “…and now, yoga.” That half a sentence is one chapter. It is a very strange way to start a book of that dimension. Intellectually, it does not make any sense, but experientially what it is saying is: “if you still believe that building a new house, or finding a new wife, or getting your daughter married will settle your life, it is not yet time for yoga. But, if you have seen money, power, wealth and pleasure, you have tasted everything in your life and you have realized that nothing is going to work in the real sense and fulfil you ultimately, then it is time for yoga.”

 

All the nonsense that the whole world is involved in, Patanjali just brushes it aside with half a sentence. This is why the first sutra is “…and now, yoga.” That means, you know nothing works and you do not have a clue about what the hell this is; the pain of ignorance is tearing you apart. Now, yoga. Now there is a way to know.

 

What is Yoga?

In the western part of the world, if you utter the word “yoga”, people think of impossible physical postures. This is a very distorted idea of what yoga is. The word “yoga” literally means “union.” What does union mean? Today, it is a scientific fact that the whole existence is just one energy manifesting itself in a million different ways. For ages, the religions of the world have been saying, “God is everywhere.” Whether you say “God is everywhere” or “Everything is one energy,” it is the same reality expressed in different ways. But a scientist has only mathematically deduced it. He has not experienced it. A person who just believes it has also not experienced it because somebody has just told him so.

 

A yogi is someone who is not willing to settle for deductions or belief systems. He wants to know it. If he sits with his eyes closed, there is no him and the universe. He is the universe. If even for a moment, you experience everything around you as yourself, after that, no one needs to tell you to nurture and preserve what is around you. You will anyway do it because there is no conflict with whatever you have known as yourself. There is only absolute unity and a deep sense of involvement. So yoga is not about bending and twisting your body or holding your breath. It is a mechanism and a whole technology of how to get you to that state of experience where you see reality just the way it is.

 

Is such a thing possible? The individual experience of who you are has its basis on the boundaries of your sensation. Whatever is within these boundaries is you, and whatever is outside is not you – this is your experience of life. For example, once you have drunk a glass of water, you experience it as you. Everything that makes up your body right now was somewhere outside as food or water. Once you put this into the boundaries of your sensation, you experience it as “myself.”

 

At any moment in your life, if you have known an extreme sense of joy or ecstasy, if you had placed your hands about eight or nine inches over your body, you would have felt the sensation of touching the body. Similarly, it is a medical fact that even when a physical leg is amputated, the sensory leg is still intact. So, the sensory body has its own presence beyond the physical body. And there is a way to enlarge your sensory body. If you make your life energies very exuberant and ecstatic, then your sensory body becomes as large as you want it. What is meant by yoga is, to expand the boundary of your sensation in such a way that you experience the whole universe as a part of yourself; everything becomes one. That is the union we are talking about. Anything that leads to this union, whichever way you get there, is called yoga.

 

The Four Paths of Yoga

Question: Sadhguru, there are so many different types of yoga. How do I know which kind of yoga is best for me?

 

You can only work with what you have. If I talk about something that you do not know, you have a choice: either to believe it or disbelieve it. Suppose I start talking about a particular god, you either have to believe my god or disbelieve my god. Either way, this will only take you into fanciful imagination, not growth. Realizing where you are right now existentially and then taking the next step is the only way to grow. The whole process of yoga is to take you from something that you know to the next step, into the unknown.

 

The only four realities in your life right now are: body, mind, emotion, and energy. Whatever you wish to do with yourself, it must be on these four levels. If you use your emotions and try to reach the ultimate, we call this bhakti yoga – the path of devotion. If you use your intelligence and try to reach the ultimate, we call this gnana yoga – the path of intelligence. If you use your body, or physical action to reach the ultimate, we call this karma yoga – the path of action. If you transform your energies and try to reach the ultimate, we call this kriya yoga. That means internal action.

 

These are the only four ways you can get somewhere: either through karma, gnana, bhakti or kriya – body, mind, emotion, or energy. Which is the most appropriate for you? Is there anyone who is only head, no heart, hands and energy? Or is there anyone who is only heart, not the other things? Every individual is a combination of these four things. It is just that in one person the heart may be dominant, in another the head may be dominant, in yet another the hands may be dominant, but everybody is a combination of these four, so you need a combination of these four. Only if it is mixed in the right way for you, it works best. What we give for one person, may not work well for you. Only when it is mixed in the right proportion it works for you. That is why on the spiritual path there is so much stress on a live Guru. He mixes the right cocktail for you, otherwise there is no punch.

 

Uniting the four types of yoga

It once happened. Four men were walking in the forest. The first was a gnana yogi, the second was a bhakti yogi, the third was a karma yogi, and the fourth was a kriya yogi.

 

Usually, these four people can never be together. The gnana yogi has total disdain for every other type of yoga. His is the yoga of intelligence, and normally, an intellectual person has complete disdain for everybody else, particularly these bhakti types, who look upward and chant God’s name all the time. They look like a bunch of idiots to him.

 

But a bhakti yogi, a devotee, thinks all this gnana, karma and kriya yoga is a waste of time. He pities the others who don’t see that when God is here, all you need to do is hold His hand and walk. All this mind-splitting philosophy, this bone-bending yoga, is not needed; God is here, because God is everywhere.

 

Then there is the karma yogi, the man of action. He thinks all the other types of yogis, with their fancy philosophies, are just lazy.

 

But a kriya yogi is the most disdainful of all. He laughs at everyone. Don’t they know that all of existence is energy? If you don’t transform your energy, whether you long for God or you long for anything else, nothing is going to happen. There will be no transformation.

 

These four people can’t get along. But today they happened to be walking together in the forest and a storm broke out. It grew very intense, and it started raining heavily. They started running, looking for shelter.

 

The bhakti yogi, the devotion man, said, “In this direction there is an ancient temple. Let’s go there.” (He knows the geography of temples very well!)

 

They all ran in that direction. They came to an ancient temple; all the walls had crumbled long ago; just the roof and four columns remained. They rushed into the temple; not out of love for God, but just to escape the rain.

 

There was a deity in the center. They ran towards it. The rain started lashing from every direction. There was no other place to go, so they moved closer and closer. Finally, there was no alternative. They just hugged the deity and sat down.

 

The moment these four people hugged the idol, there was a huge fifth presence. Suddenly, God appeared.

 

In all their four minds the same question arose: why now? They wondered, “We expounded so many philosophies, did so many pujas, served so many people, done so much body-breaking sadhana, but you didn’t come. Now when we’re just escaping the rain, you turn up. Why?”

God said, “At last you four idiots got together!”

 

If these dimensions don’t walk together, human beings will be one big mess. Right now, for most people, these dimensions are aligned in different directions. Your mind is thinking and feeling one way, your physical body is going another way, your energy and emotions another way. Yoga is simply the science of aligning these four dimensions.

 

Five Myths about Yoga

There is a lot of “yoga” happening in the world today that has very little to do with what yoga really is. Several myths about this ancient practice have long been masquerading as facts. It’s time we demystify yoga, in Sadhguru’s very own words.

 

• Myth 1: Yoga comes from Hinduism

Sadhguru: Yoga is Hindu just the way gravity is Christian! Just because the law of gravity was propounded by Isaac Newton, who lived in a Christian culture, does it make gravity Christian? Yoga is a technology. Anyone who is willing to make use of it can make use of it.

 

Why the yogic sciences have gotten labeled as Hindu by a few ignorant people is because this science and technology grew and prospered in this culture, so naturally it has gotten associated with the Hindu way of life. The word “Hindu” has come from the word “Sindhu”, which is a river. Because this culture grew from the banks of the river Sindhu or Indus, this culture got labeled as Hindu. Hindu is not an “ism” – it is not a religion. It is a geographical and cultural identity.

 

• Myth 2: Want six-pack abs? Yoga is a great exercise regime.

Sadhguru: If fitness is what you are seeking, if you want six-pack abs or whatever number, I would say go and play tennis or hike in the mountains. Yoga is not an exercise, it has other dimensions attached to it. A different dimension of fitness – yes – you get health out of it, but not six-pack abs. If you are doing yoga to burn calories or tone up your muscle, obviously you are doing improper yoga, there is no question about that. For abs, you can go to the gym. Yoga needs to be practiced in a very subtle, gentle way, not in a forceful muscle-building way, because this is not about exercise.

 

The physical body has a whole memory structure. If you are willing to read it, everything – how this cosmos evolved from nothingness to this point – is written into the body. When you do asanas, you are opening up that memory and trying to restructure this life towards an ultimate possibility. If hatha yoga is taught in a proper atmosphere, it is a fantastic process of shaping your system into a fantastic vessel, a fabulous device to receive the Divine.

 

• Myth 3: Find your groove. Yoga & music go well.

Sadhguru: There should never be a mirror or music when you practice asanas. Hatha yoga demands a certain involvement of your body, mind, energy and the innermost core. If you want to get the involvement of that which is the source of creation within you, your body, mind and energy must be absolutely involved. You should approach it with a certain reverence and focus. Not just going, playing music and doing something. One of the biggest problems in yoga studios is, the teacher is doing asanas and speaking. This is a sure way to cause damage to yourself.

 

No talking in the asana is not just a norm, it is a rule. You never ever speak in postures. The breath, the mental focus and the stability of energy is most important when you are doing the asana. If you speak, you will destroy all that. At least eight to ten people have come to us with serious imbalances with which we have helped them. I think about four of them have given up their profession now because they knew what nonsense they were doing.

 

A few years ago when I was in America, I was invited to speak in a yoga studio by someone. So I went to her yoga studio and music was playing – chang, chang, chang – to keep everybody enthusiastic. She was in ardhamatsyendrasana and was talking to a group of people. When she saw me, she just jumped up from the table, came and hugged me.

 

I took her aside and told her, “See, you will bring serious imbalances into your system. How long have you been doing this?” She said some fifteen, sixteen years. I said, “If you’ve done this for sixteen years, you must be suffering from this, this and this.” She looked at me terrified and the next day she comes to me and says, “Sadhguru, what you said has been happening to me. I’m going through all sorts of treatment from the doctors.” I said, “You don’t need a doctor, you are causing it. You stop this, this will go away.” After about one-and-a-half years, she gave up teaching yoga.

 

A lot of people who have done improper yoga have lost their mental balance. This is not because yoga is dangerous. Stupidity has always been a dangerous thing on the planet. You do something stupid, it will cause damage to you. Stupidity is one thing which has always been a dangerous thing on this planet, right from ancient times.

 

• Myth 4: Need a yoga study guide? You can learn yoga from a book.

Sadhguru: Today, if you enter any major bookstore, you will find a minimum of 15 to 20 different yoga books. “How to learn yoga in 7 days”, “how to become a yogi in 21 days”… Many people have caused immense damage to themselves by learning yoga through books. It seems to be very simple, but when you do it, you will see it is a very subtle aspect. This has to be done with perfect understanding and proper guidance. Without this, one can get into deep trouble. A book can inspire you, but it is not meant to teach a practice.

 

• Myth 5: Yoga is something you practice every morning and evening

Sadhguru: Yoga is not something that you do morning-evening. It is a certain way of being. One must become yoga. If it’s morning-evening yoga, the rest of the time entanglement – this is not yoga, this is only yoga practice.

 

There is no aspect of life which is excluded from the yogic process. If your life becomes yoga, then you can do everything. You can run your family, you can go to the office, you can run your business, you can do whatever you want without any problem if your way of being becomes yoga. Every aspect of life, either you can use it to entangle yourself or to liberate yourself. If you are using it to entangle yourself, we call it as karma. If you are using it to liberate yourself, we call it yoga.

 

Sadhguru, a yogi, is a visionary, humanitarian and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet, and internationally-renowned speaker, Sadhguru’s wit and piercing logic provoke and widen our perception of life. 

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