How This Contemporary Guru Found Freedom Through Yoga and Meditation
And why they are the key to self-transformation
I close my eyes, my head slightly upturned to the heavens, hands on my thighs with palms facing north, meditating for the first time in my life with the guidance of his recorded voice. “I am not the body… I am not also the mind,” the calm voice reiterates.
For the first time, I crave this stillness; no plans or panic, just stillness.
Meditation is not a new topic, especially in the self-development world with its many teachings of mindfulness. Also, with prominent personalities like Oprah Winfrey, heralding the practice of advanced meditation techniques, it shouldn’t have taken me this long to try it out. But like many others, I had preconceived notions of yoga and assigned it a part of some other culture. It never occurred to me to clarify my inherited judgment until I watched Sadhguru’s interview with Tom Bilyeu, where he covered complex topics of human existence with geniality and clarity.
I decided I owed it to myself to explore the concept of self-transformation through yoga and meditation.
The NIH defines Meditation as a mind and body practice that improves psychological balance and enhances relaxation and general wellbeing. And reported a 10.1% rise in the adult’s use of meditation in the United States between 2012 and 2017.
Meanwhile, research on how to get started was easier than I imagined it would be, as Sadhguru has thousands of videos spread across his channels, exploring the nature of our existence and sharing advice on how a deeper understanding of our mind and bodies can enable one to live a life free from stress and anxiety.
His elucidations, already child-level clear, are made digestible with anecdotes and metaphors. His quips, dripping with humor, mirror his sharp wit. And for every question one asks, he seems to have an analogy or even scientific explanation.
As little things make the most impressions, most profound, to me, is the way he laughs.
His laughter seems to originate from somewhere below his belly, and the vibration rumbles upwards, spreading to all parts of his body such that his entire body quakes, laughing with him.
Every single time, I have caught myself smiling along.
A couple of days into binge-watching and reading his content, and the questions rang in my head: Who is Sadhguru? Where did he come from, and how on earth can one person know so much about everything?
A quick search through forums and internet communities showed I wasn’t the only one asking those questions.
The “who” was simple enough to come to, given his far-spread reputation.
Sadhguru is a mystic and runs Isha Foundation, the largest nonprofit organization in the world. He is also a bestselling author, and an acclaimed spiritual leader, popular among world leaders, entrepreneurs, and top celebrities.
Why he has gotten so much acclaim among prominent personalities in the world is not surprising; What is, is the journey:
How did a young literary scholar with no disposition to religion, beliefs, or education, attain freedom from the misery of the mind and body? How did the young skeptic grow to become a mystic, leading over 11 million volunteers in humanitarianism?
After reading his book, Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy, and watching countless interviews, here are the answers.
The Beginning
In 1957, Jaggi Vasudev “Sadhguru’’ was born in Mysore, a town in southern India. He was the youngest of four children. Growing up in the 60s, Sadhguru was a restless kid who had a lot of questions but was never satisfied with the answers presented to him. At 4, he was a tormentor to his class teachers, especially those who didn’t imbibe the lessons they taught. He was inquisitive about every aspect of life, including religion, and preferred to stay out of the temples because he didn’t understand why everyone else went in.
As he grew older, he took to nature. He would often spend hours of the day on his bicycle, exploring the environment, and committing the terrain to memory. With his peculiar interests, he learned to pay attention; concentrated attention. It was unnerving to those who didn’t understand him. Even his father thought he was losing his mind when he caught Sadhguru staring unblinkingly at inconsequential objects.
Shortly, Sadhguru discovered something more mesmerizing than staring at objects until they disintegrated into nothingness. “When my eyes were open, everything intrigued me — an ant, a leaf, clouds, flowers, darkness, just about anything,” Sadhguru explained, “But to my amazement, I found that with my eyes closed, there was even more that grabbed my attention — the way the body pulses, the way different organs function, the various channels along which one’s inner energy moves, the manner in which the anatomy is aligned, the fact that boundaries are limited to the external world.”
When Sadhguru was 12, he met 70-year-old Malladihalli Swami, his soon-to-be yogi. He and his male cousins were playing a dangerous game of speed: jumping into a 150-feet dry well and climbing out as fast as possible. Sadhguru was the star of this game, but Malladihalli easily outshone him by jumping into the well and climbing out faster than he ever had.
Intrigued, Sadhguru followed him, eager to know the secret behind his agility. Malladihalli agreed to teach him yoga, and there his journey began.
His yogi lived to be 106 years old, and until his dying day, continued to teach yoga.
The Ultimate Freedom
Yoga was the only activity Sadhguru performed with discipline. He was still adventurous at heart and wanted nothing to do with the constrictive four walls of a school. As a teenager, he cultivated a love for the written word and would spend hours in the library, swimming through classics, physics, and philosophy texts. However, he ended up with more questions than answers.
After spending a gap-year with no intention of furthering his education, his Father nudged him to pick a serious course, while his mother pleaded with him to go to the University, at least. He obliged on the condition that he studied English literature as a major.
Done and dusted with higher education, his restlessness still wasn’t quelled. Ironically, it was stoked.
During his University days, Sadhguru skipped classes and arranged with the lecturers to pass him their notes instead. They were all too supportive — anything to be rid of the weird guy. So, Sadhguru spent his time traveling the country on his motorcycle. Once, when an officer stopped him at the India-Nepal frontier and demanded to see his papers, which he neither had nor thought necessary, the fire kindled in Sadhguru to travel the world on his motorcycle.
Sadhguru wanted more from life, and he knew more than anything else, the answer was within him.
He started a poultry business to fund this wanderlust, and even though that blew up, his father was dismayed that his son reared chickens while others did great jobs.
Sadhguru then partnered with his friend, a civil engineer, to set up a construction company. In five years, they grew to become one of the largest private construction companies in the town.
It was during this period, exactly 13 years after he started taking yoga lessons, that Sadhguru took a seemingly ordinary trip up Chamundi Hill to meditate.
There, he transcended. And for the first time in his life, he experienced exuberance and knew pure joy.
The first experience lasted 4 hours and left him feeling a tad confused. No one understood him when he tried to explain it.
It was after subsequent encounters he realized he had gone through a dimensional shift, and his life would never remain the same. “Until this time, I had completely refused to accept anything in my life that did not fit into a rational and logical framework. Slowly, I began to realize that it is life that is the ultimate intelligence. Human intellect is mere smartness that ensures survival. But true intelligence is just life and life — and that which is the source of life. Nothing else.”
With this newfound knowledge, Sadhguru gave up his position in the booming business and embarked on his spiritual journey to guide people through meditation and yoga to discover what he did — inner peace.
The Isha Foundation
In 1992, Sadhguru founded the Isha Foundation to promote social upliftment and global harmony through individual transformation. The foundation, through his influence, grew beyond organizing inner transformation yoga programs, to establishing large-scale initiatives that tackled humanitarian problems in the public health, education, and environmental sectors.
In 2006, the foundation’s flagship environmental initiative, Project Green Hands, saw the planting of 852, 587 saplings, breaking the world record for the most trees planted in three days. So far, the foundation has seen the planting of 41 million trees.
He visited the United States in 1997, on the invitation of his former students, who helped him set up yoga classes in different cities. In 1999, Sadhguru established Isha Institute of Inner-sciences in Nashville, Tennessee, as the United States headquarters for Isha Foundation. Now, the foundation has over 150 centers distributed worldwide.
The community has grown in leaps and bounds as millions of people have been impacted by the foundation’s programs. The renown of Sadhguru’s wisdom spreads alongside their testimonies.
Sadhguru has given hundreds of talks at diverse gatherings and events over the past decade, covering all topics of human existence; from primal, to technological, to spiritual. He has contributed to prestigious events organized by the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, and also been invited to speak at top institutions.
People, as I was, are often astonished to find out there isn’t a topic considered too outrageous for him to share his understanding. When he was asked how he had such in-depth knowledge on complex aspects of human experiences, he smiled and said, “If you fix your geometry, then your spine can work like an antenna, with which you can access any information from the universe.”
The Contemporary Guru
A lot of things stand out about Sadhguru; His agility and alertness, for instance.
Even at 63 years old, Sadhguru, with energy to match his biking skills, travels the world on advanced motorcycle engines. His latest adventure, Of Motorcycles and a Mystic, was a 36-day motorcycle tour across 19 states in North America, where he explored their spiritual dimensions and culture.
He also has a prominent online presence and has made his programs accessible by integrating them into web and mobile apps. His mobile app, Sadhguru, gives you offline (once you’ve downloaded them) access to video and audio guides for meditation and yoga practice. And one-click access to his latest videos, articles, and tweets. Also, there is the option to subscribe to his exclusive content; not publically available.
He has various YouTube channels covering his interviews and insights. On his main channel, you have access to snippets or full videos or his interviews and engagement with all classes of people, be they, young or old, celebrity or unknown, experienced or learning.
Even though some followers have taken to calling him a “modern” guru, Sadhguru clarifies that there is no ancient or modern distinction about yoga techniques, and the science of yoga is as relevant to everyone as it was thousands of years ago. Since the technology doesn’t change, all gurus are, by default, contemporary.
While he lives up to his popularity as a contemporary guru, some of those differentials between him and other gurus have led to targeted attacks from certain media outlets.
Sadhguru formed his alias from the term “guru” whose meaning has been entwined with the misconception of indoctrination. He clarifies that self-transformation is an internal process, and his part is to serve as the signpost to show willing people how to find inner peace, not convert people to a certain belief system. “As a guru, I have no doctrine to teach, no philosophy to impart, no belief to propagate,” he wrote, “And that is because the only solution for all the ills that plague humanity is self-transformation.”
This makes perfect sense when he points out that conflict and war result from people’s belief clashing against another’s. Neither side would claim to be the bad one, hence it’s not a fight of good vs bad; It is one’s belief against another’s. He advises one should learn the distinction between knowing and believing.
His diverse following is a testament to the inclusiveness of his programs, and as Jahid Hussain commented, “His spiritualism never asks or excludes any religion or caste.”
The Science of Yoga
Yoga is an entirely scientific method that originates not in faith or belief but in a profound understanding of the human mechanism. Nor does it come from some naïve sense of optimism. The premise is simple: if you have a good seed and if you create the right atmosphere, it will sprout.
Creating the right atmosphere of body and mind is the only work. You do not have to do anything else. No teachings of morality, no metaphysical discourses are needed. If your humanity is stirred, you are a beautiful human being.
In his book, Inner Engineering, Sadhguru explains the intricacies of yoga, and how one has to align the body, mind, energy, and emotions to attain self-transformation.
He explains that the human body is the most sophisticated instrument in creation, and without understanding how it functions, one would never know how to use it.
While our five senses are good enough for basic survival, it is not sufficient to understand the true nature of our existence. For instance, just because we can’t perceive things doesn’t mean they don’t exist. When we fall asleep, our senses do so too, and if we were to conclude our being by our sensation, we will make great blunders. But we can learn to become conscious of the unconscious workings of our bodies, and can stretch our boundaries to the intensity of our life’s energy.
Life is a combination of time and energy. The latter, he explains, is what we can influence because time passes whether or not we act. It is how we channel our energy that makes our life worthwhile.
In an interview with Youtuber Paul Logan, he illustrated life’s energy and the limit of our sensations. Just like how you feel a pull between your palms, after rubbing them together and pulling them a few inches apart, you can extend your sensations beyond your body to experience the universe.
He clarifies that there is more to yoga than contouring one’s body. One has to untangle from the mind in order to experience life beyond physical limitations. And the essence of yoga is to bring one to that place independent of mind and body.
The source of our anxiety and depression is our mind. We suffer from memory and imagination. And contrary to the popular mindfulness teaching: Be present, Sadhguru explains that it took millions of years to get our brains to the level it is now, and asking one to water down its capacity is a waste of evolution. Rather, one should learn to harness the mind. “There is a way to use your mind in the highest possible way but still never know the miseries of the mind.”
If we become conscious of our inner-workings and learn to understand the nature of our mind and body, we can learn to ride the compulsive cycles of our existence, rather than being subjected to it. And until we attain self-enlightenment by learning to use our bodies, emotions, and thoughts as instruments, we might move through life without ever experiencing what it means to be alive.
To know joy is to be encumbered by neither body nor mind.
“The most beautiful moments in your life — what you might consider moments of bliss, joy, ecstasy, or utter peace — were moments when you were not thinking about anything at all. You were just being. Even without your thoughts, existence is.” — Sadhguru
While the book gives an exposition of the dimensions of yoga, especially how we can use our mind, body, and emotions intentionally to attain inner-peace, the mobile app is a repository of Sadhguru’s yoga and meditation program guides.