Phrenic

He's too cool for samskriti.

It's so strange to see abrupt posts like this when the ABCs of Hindu sadhana imply that Surya, Chandra (the Sun and the Moon) are responsible for physical genetics and that there are simple practices geared towards distancing from genetics systematically. The very basic practice anybody can find online is called Surya Namaskar, Isha offers Surya Kriya. Experience things before making claims. Likewise there's no spiritual matrix or paradigm at Isha, they just experience and understand that physical responsibilities are an extension of their Being, it's non-duality without the philosophical fuzz neglecting or suppressing real-life concerns, meanwhile ranting about making girls horny and essentially survival stage spiral dynamics with regards to physiological energy. Look into Hindu sadhana so that your spiritual understanding isn't lopsided, the body's energy is comprised of varying levels of real, tangible sheathes/koshas such as the five elements, prana and the mental/physical body. This isn't just philosophy, anybody who undertakes any simple practice can experience physical benefits and tie it in with rudimentary Hindu concepts. This is the least you would expect of a spiritual forum but things are too far on the side of non-dual experience and neglecting/misunderstanding other aspects of life. You would do better to outright ignore Leo and put yourself out there to really experience things. I think it goes without saying that everybody is empathetic with Sadhguru's situation and wishes him a speedy recovery, this is an internet forum and the discussions do not have to be track-minded. You can do two things.

Bit of an update, Sadhguru explains here that he's willing to throw his life away for his work - "If you try to save yourself, you don't know the value of life." Let's listen from the man himself before psychoanalyzing his lifestyle 😂

Isha is a lived in experience that a lot of people have committed their entire life to. Spiritual foundations and cults tow the line and due to the nature of the work that can be no other way, it can only be something so profoundly life-changing that causes these people to commit themselves to a foundation full time, or brainwashing as you're alluding to. All of the advanced programmes are conducted for free and Isha has struggled for money in the past. People volunteer for free for non-profit animal sanctuaries, it isn't an uncommon practice if people think the work is worthwhile I've gone through the programmes and experience their benefits myself so I'm only pointing out how important and invaluable experiencing potent yoga outside of substances can be. To put multiple paths into perspective it's important not to crystallize yourself in one or the other, and as much as I'd urge people to try new things and take a long break from psychedelics it's still important to remain consciously critical. Psychedelics open the gates and have an invaluable place along our journey in that regard

Many of the practices taught in Isha exist way outside of its scope, one of the case studies I'm linking explains that Shambhavi Mahamudra is a combination of breathing exercises that exist in many Hindu teachings. The Hatha yoga pradipika, nadi shuddhi, kumbhaka to name a few Spiritual foundations tend to be non-profit and have volunteers, and people volunteer for specific campaigns regarding Save Soil, Cauvery Calling and so on. I've volunteered for Inner Engineering programmes in the past as a point of contact for practice corrections, and I did it because Shambhavi was very helpful in my life, and there are case studies for this introductory practice that you can look into - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5871312/, https://innerengineering.sadhguru.org/research There are people on your forum that have testified towards Isha's practices helping them too On the outset Isha can very easily look like a cult, Yogananda's kriya yoga teachings were taught through a Christian lense at times and he often used religious terminology. All of the money gets funneled back into the foundation as a non-profit, but there have been times where Sadhguru has collaborated with celebrities for money during COVID. With the level of involvement they have and the programmes they run worldwide it is easy to see where the money goes There are Hatha yoga instructors that take it up imparting yoga as self-employement, and all of the advanced Isha programmes are conducted for free past the introductory programmes

If I have to do your research for you and pull up testimonials, case studies on shambhavi mahamudra and attend an advanced programme for you too then what's the point?

It seems as though it has been very effective if Isha has 9+ million volunteers. Sadhguru often mentions in his books that the Brahmacharyas worked up to 24 hours a day, and he himself slept 5 hours a night It isn't hard to see that potent yoga might allow you to use your body in a superhuman way, and he only seems to have had a handful of serious emergencies documented throughout his entire life. There's a degree of complacency to account for if he genuinely has the purported capacity to self-recover I also highly doubt he sees helping people on a psychological victim-rescuer level. Many many people are not ready to experience non-dual states, and this is where a more proactive material approach becomes relevant as an expression of grosser aspects of life. This is written all throughout Hinduism and also why practices that deal with grosser dimensions are relevant

Helping people in any way is as much as an illusion as tending to your own life, your dietary needs, or even posting on this forum. Limiting your experience with non-dualistic loops shows a lack of understanding in more illusory/relative levels of life. Of course it is an illusion, and so is feeding yourself properly, caring for your kids or earning a living. Whilst we are embodied we help people as an extension of ourselves, and our lives and karma are a reflection of our embodied responsibilities whilst we are here and interconnected with the world at large. Our relative lives are still important so long as we are here to live them, if not why put up this game of talking? The whole stipulation of coming full circle is realizing that life's karma is to uplift ourselves and therefore others, so unless we're deciding to leave our very existence is a natural response to life. Sadhguru's lifestyle is a result of his response to life or reality as an extension of himself, and by practicing a form of potent yoga and purification you open yourself up to that kind of connectivity. It isn't that he's mentally motivated to saving others, any less than a flower is motivated to bloom. The article I linked talks about the place that non-duality has on the path and how it can lead people towards a disconnect from grosser aspects of their own karma/life, inducing higher levels of consciousness does not mean that there are not relative and more materialistic forms of responsibility which are as just as integral as anything perceived as higher. This is why Isha and Hinduism as a whole emphasizes purifying grosser aspects of your subtler physiology, without a holistic approach non-dual consciousness, and especially stimulatory induced non-dual consciousness, can create disconnect from grosser aspects of life and create top-heavy psychological loops to uphold itself One big problem here is being self-convinced that people like Sadhguru are not experiencing states brought about by 5-MeO-DMT, and whilst you may have attended a single introductory Isha event, there are countless people who have passed through the Actualized pipeline and come out at the other end of the psychological tangle. In the same vein as needlessly claiming there's infinite states of consciousness after emptiness, substance intake creates psychological loops that take away from deeper states of emptiness/shoonya, which would lead towards more sensitive states of consciousness, subtlety and responsiveness to life on all levels, not just those that lock you in a state of non-dualistic, psychologically reinforced transcendence as God Your videos are very helpful on a psychological level by providing pointers towards non-dual experience and this is reinforced by experience with substances, but it need not be experienced as stimulatory self-referencing loops which can potentially later translate to psychological loops. Correctly initiated, potent yoga is far more scientific, subtle, purificatory and will open you up as just as much to those experiences. To come full circle again is to really admit that you know nothing, not to stick to a path or plant a flag in the ground for the sake of security

The end-goal isn't a materialistic outcome though. It isn't making more of a difference to promote an intellect-oriented focus on non-duality and 100s of videos repeating the same things. Having a profound crown level experience of reality, talking about it for 1000s of hours and reversing the experience of formlessness to form due to the nature of substances is not a more holistic approach, it is reversing the nature of spiritual progress because stimulants still limit things outside of the experiences they induce (they're not sattvic) After experiencing Isha's practices and 5-MeO-DMT years prior it is very clear to me that substances come with detrimental, limiting effects. Holistic transformation requires activity on all levels, physical yoga is a means to an end and you have to cater to materialism to some degree in a relative, materialistic world If you stepped outside of this and attended any Isha event you would easily grasp any of what Isha, or what Sadhguru subtly imparts into the world asides from any experiential realizations wrought by 5-MeO-DMT This article propounds upon the place that non-duality and a crown level of spirituality has in the world, there are realizations to be had outside of this which are related to purifying grosser aspects so that your progress is grounded and not limited to the "highest" levels of experience Instead of sharing an opinion just for the sake of having one, it would be helpful to experience some of what Isha has taught outside of any first impressions from videos or articles. Through classical Hatha yoga or any of the yoga that Isha teaches you'd experience something similar, your sleep quota going down is related to how at ease your body is and its connection to the larger body, Hatha yoga is about aligning yourself with the sun and the moon and achieving a level of physical rapport with the rest of existence. Hatha yoga is not exclusive to Isha either, but it isn't unexpected that this community has a limited understanding of the importance of yoga in our day and age There is an exhaustive list of things that this forum do not understand due to the nature of spiritual progress through substances, crystallizing yourself here is a mistake and I'd urge every single one of you to experience anything that Isha has to offer first and foremost. One easy topic to extrapolate with is sex, if you're experiencing a level of subtlety of body by working at and purifying things through any potent Hatha yoga or any requiring initiation such as in Isha's, you'd connect the dots in articles like this - https://isha.sadhguru.org/en/wisdom/article/body-memories-washing-of-runanubandha, explaining the body's accumulation of memory and the detrimental effects of promiscuity There are many dimensions to spirituality outside of non-dual experiences of oneness, love and God, and we require the grounding of purificatory practices that deal with very real aspects of our subtle physiology like the five elements (bhuta shuddhi), the pranic/genetic body (hatha yoga) and further to nothingness or shoonya, to apply our non-dual experiences and understandings to the rest of the world in a holistic light

How do you that his methods are not a reliable path to enlightenment?, where are these statistics that you are pulling out of your ass? This video was released on Sadhguru Exclusive, and as such it is fancified and made to look appealing for the seekers that are thirsty enough to pay and watch What you are saying shows that you haven't bothered to try any practices yourself, or began to understand Hindu spirituality and the way in which it encompasses every area of life. Be careful with your own biases and dogma, a genuine Guru will be able to flick the switch for you in an instant, and that is the nature of Tantra and yoga. Comparing Sadhguru to non-dual teachers is a bit silly, if you experience his presence or any of the advanced programmes that Isha offers you will see that he is everything any Western or non-dual teacher can be and much, much more. Nobody you know compares or is close to being the same league with regards to their capability to enlighten other beings It is one thing to approach things through substances, or to transcend and reach through self-inquiry and meditation, and it is quite another thing to have the inner capability to consecrate the Dhyanalinga, which upholds every dimension of life at the highest possible peak. Give the technology a try before knocking it, or at least make an effort to understand Hindu spirituality before sharing publically gross and misrepresentative caricatures. These are not things that you talk about without experience or understanding, tens of thousands of years of spiritual culture and culmination do not exclude what you have experienced up to now. Yoga simply means conscious action, it isn't "accidental", or one method or path which excludes other methods, it is by its nature inclusive and non-discriminatory. In this context, nothing is more reliable than a Guru and the science to attain

Here is a brief example of the spiritual approach towards genetics through Hatha yoga -

That is precisely why potent Hatha yoga is taught in genuine spiritual foundations, in Hinduism it is the intermediate transmission of energy from our parents through prana which genetically encodes the physical body. Hatha means Sun and Moon, it is a means to reconstruct the physical body and to purify and distance yourself from genetic information, because the source of our physical manifestation ultimately comes from the solar system In Isha potent Hatha yoga like Surya Kriya and Yogasanas are building blocks and rudimentary steps, but also a means to ride the cycles of nature and rise above any form of energetic influence in family or society and so on. Surya Kriya is described as a means to align your physiology with the sun's cycles, and according to yogic lore this purification carries over from previous lifetimes All other practices are geared towards realization and there is essentially no limit to the potency of these practices if you look in the right places, Isha being one of them. You would be surprised how these things fit together if you care to try or look into it

LSD and the Mind of the Universe by Christopher M. Bache - a professor of religious studies meticulously documents his insights from 73 high-dose LSD sessions conducted over the course of 20 years

Life can be experienced from various dimensions, whether those dimensions are illusive or not It is a trickery of language to pretend that other dimensions of energy and deities and so on do not exist, they do exist in the practically relevant sense that your physical body exists, and are therefore a relevant aspect of life You cannot apply higher modes of consciousness to yourself and every single problem that exists in the world, that is not a practical or scientific approach, the illusion has to be purified from varying levels to be dealt with from its various existing levels Not all people are willing to transcend the illusion of life in this manner, in the same way that the Buddha failed to transform the world's population into monks, life as it exists is a multi-faceted illusion and has to be approached as such

This is a misunderstanding, because by that definition simply having a body and living are also a form of ego. If somebody is fully enlightened but also tends to to the body in a particular way, there does not have to be an identity involved. If we are limiting ourselves to higher states of consciousness from the crown chakra, which is one dimension of experience, whether we refer to it through no-dual language as nothingness, reality, love and so on, then we won't necessarily selflessly embrace other modalities of life and energy and attend to them in a relative manner, as a multi-faceted energy form. Living as nothingness, reality, love and embodying higher levels of reality is not a practical solution for all of the world's problems on the outset, because like the world, our physical bodies comprise of pranic physiology and the five elements, lifetimes of karmic impurities on various levels which exist regardless of our state of consciousness. If we are in touch with things in this spiritually holistic and sober sense, the realistic pace at which we can help ourselves and other people, especially those outside of the spiritual community who are not willing to immediately transcend everything, will be more obvious. It is important to attain to non-dual states through ground up purification, so that energy can function from other dimensions without an identity. I agree with you that prana is a duality, masculine and feminine, the five elements, these are all dualities, but it is our purity in prana and the elements which determines how dualistic our experience of life is. Taking 5-MeO-DMT and transcending the karma existing in these physiological bodies is not a scientific approach, and we risk lopsiding our spiritual development. Look at the Dhyanalinga for example, it has no karma or identity, but it is reverberating as all of the 7 chakras and dimensions of life, it is a fully developed energetic form with the non-dual dimension of sahasrara at the highest possible peak Likewise, the energetic forms of the Divine Mother do not have an ego or identity, they exist as deities in the form of the pure five elements, so that people can surrender and make use of them to purify themselves. Language makes this difficult. Isha's practices work to strip you of your identity very early on, which is also what I meant when I said that they allow you to function from subtler energetic sheathes, to purify and transcend gross forms of karma in mind and body