Shanmugam

Whoever that lady is, she is looking good and also eerily familiar.. I still wonder if it is a photo of a celebrity that I have seen.

That was very good.. I actually missed this post yesterday.. But I wrote a similar one in Quora regarding Sadhguru, just yesterday It was an answer to the question Is Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev trying to convert Shiva Purana to science? Why does he insist that the fantasy stories in Shiva Purana and other mythological stories are based on science? This question was asked regarding a particular post in Isha blog: http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/yoga-meditation/history-of-yoga/the-bhrigu-samhita-predicting-humanitys-future/ Here is what I wrote: Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is very clever and extremely creative. Since I have already written a lot about him before in Quora, I will write this answer in a humorous way. Let alone Shiva Purana, he can link the story of Genesis from Bible to yogic culture and interpret it in yogic way if he wants to do that. So the following narration that you will be reading is just imaginary. (By the way, the story of Genesis indeed has a metaphoric interpretation to show how a human being is born with pure innocence, how he is fallen in the process of growth and how he restores the lost innocence and nature. That is a totally different interpretation) Let us assume for a moment that someone asks him a question ‘Is there a scientific and esoteric meaning to the story of Genesis in Bible? Is it in anyway related to yogic culture?”. And let us also assume that he has decided to give it a yogic meaning for some reason. Here is how Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev will probably answer that question: “ See… When they say God created the world in 7 days, it doesn’t mean that there was an old man with beard sitting up there and decided to create the world one day. The story has a huge science behind it. It is a simple story that has tremendous wisdom of yogic science embedded in it and preserved in certain way. Only if you enhance your perception in certain way, you can get the story. Otherwise you will just dismiss it as simple myth. First of all, you must understand that any new blossoming or an activity of creation always happens in 7 installments. Yogic culture has always known this. For example, we talk about 7 chakras. Reaching the Sahasrar, the 7th chakra involves a step by step process which happens in 7 stages. You behave in certain way when your energy is at mooladhara. You behave and experience the world in different way when your energy moves to Svadhistana. So in a sense, these 7 stages of evolution in the spiritual path is like a miniature version of the process of creation itself. When it is said that God created the world in 7 days, you must understand that the process of creation happened in 7 discrete stages, starting from absolute nothingness to the complete physical manifestation of the external world. Today, even modern science says that human evolution happened in 7 stages. Do you people know this? no? ok…(laughs)..Our human race evolved from Homo Habilis and it took exactly seven stages before we could become Homo Sapiens that we are today. If you understand this simple concept, you can understand the whole creation, simply by enhancing your perception. Our yogic culture has always known this but only now modern science is getting it. Now we have a huge statue of Adiyogi here. Do you know why there were saptarishis? Why not 8 or 9? It is because he initiated these 7 sages in 7 different ways, so that they can spread the science of Yoga in 7 different dimensions. Also, the process of creation itself began on a full moon day. Now don’t ask me ‘Sadhguru, how was there a moon before the process of creation itself’… (laughs).. The significance of full moon day does not come from the moon. It is actually the opposite. Because of the tremendous possibilities and high frequency vibrations that is present in a certain day, the moon appears as full moon for us. This happens once in every 15 earth days. It is just a coincidence that a moon is revolving around us, and because of the influence of high vibrations present on that certain period of time, the moon appears as full moon. That is why we have the dome of Dhyanalinga open until midnight during full moon days, because I want everyone to make use of this possibility. The story of Genesis says God rested on the seventh day. This is also symbolic but with a totally different meaning. Generally the 7th and 8th day in a lunar cycle is not good for doing any work, especially when you start something new. The energies are in certain way that it is not conducive for any new work. That is why even today in India people say you must not start anything new on Ashtami, the 8th day. It is better that if you give everything a rest on the 7th and the 8th day and it is better to avoid starting anything new. But these days everything has changed. In the West they think that 7th day means Sunday. No, it is not so. Generally, I don’t talk about these things because If I go on talking about things which are not in your experience, you cannot understand it. Isn’t it? Isn’t it so? Yes or no? Can you understand anything that is not in your experience? But don’t believe in all these things just because I say it. But don’t disbelieve me either.. Because, then you are closing all the doorways to know. “ Not just Shiva Purana, if you want any mythological story to make sense, all he has to tell you is that the characters of mythological stories were all yogis who could manipulate their energies in a ‘certain way’ (it is always a ‘certain’ way) for ‘certain’ things to happen. You just need to enhance your perception to understand it!

@Natasha Who is that lady in your profile picture? She looks very familiar..

Sadhguru is not talking about that... He is actually talking about the literal death, the kind of death after which the body starts to stink in 24 hours..

This is actually like a therapy.. It is an opportunity to test yourself to check if you are so curious to know 'who is quoting me', 'who is mentioning me', 'who is messaging me' etc.. .. If you show any concern regarding this, that means you have failed the pre-enlightenment test.

@egoless First of all, this is actually a rumor.. :) I know that you already worry too much about 'what is going to happen after enlightenment'... Just let go of the worry... If someone offers you a trip on a plane to go around the world and visit all interesting places, will you say 'no' by saying 'what if the plane crashes'? Here is a copy -paste of my another answer in Quora: Read this conversation between Ramana Maharshi and a seeker: TALK 286: Seeker: Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa says that nirvikalpa samadhi cannot last longer than twenty-one days. If persisted in, the person dies. Is it so? Ramana Mahirishi : When the prarabdha is exhausted the ego is completely dissolved without leaving any trace behind. This is final liberation. Unless prarabdha is completely exhausted the ego will be rising up in its pure form even in jivanmuktas. I still doubt the statement of the maximum duration of twenty-one days. It is said that people cannot live if they fast thirty or forty days. But there are those who have fasted longer, say a hundred days. It means that there is still prarabdha for them. Talk 391: Seeker: It is said that one remaining in nirvikalpa samadhi for 21 days must necessarily give up the physical body. Ramana Mahirishi: Samadhi means passing beyond dehatma buddhi (I-am-the-body idea) and non-identifcation of the body with the Self is a foregone conclusion. There are said to be persons who have been immersed in nirvikalpa samadhi for a thousand years or more. …………………………………… Do you see how the opinions of two enlightened mystics Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and Ramana Maharshi differ? Ramakrishna Paramhamsa got this idea from Trailinga swami (mentioned in Gospel of Ramakrishna). Who knows where Trailinga Swami got this idea from? But I don’t think anybody ever took a survey, counted the total number of enlightened people in the world, found out how many of them died at the moment of enlightenment and came up with a percentage. Also, I have went through the life and talks of many mystics.. No one is 100% infallible and even enlightened people have certain beliefs which were never verified. So what you heard is a rumor which spread like this: Trailinga Swami whispered it into the ears of Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, Ramakrishna said that in a casual gossip to a group of devotees. Osho read that in a book and said that to an even bigger audience. Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev said it louder in Youtube to millions of viewers and even printed it in the back cover of his book.

@egoless Don't talk about any 'may be's when it comes to Sadhguru... I know what he means... He doesn't contradict himself as much as Osho. He makes everything quite rigid and solid.

@pluto Sadhguru is talking about death, not just temporarily leaving the body.. 'Leaving the body' is a slang in spiritual circle to mean 'death'. If you had an experience of it, then your body should be dead by now..

@egoless And Sadhguru's statement invalidates the biggest schools of non-duality: Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism Advaita Vedanta is all about Jeevanmukthi - which means 'enlightenment' while living. And many masters in the tradition of Vedanta have lived with no problems at all. Mahayana tradition is about not only becoming enlightened but also helping others towards enlightenment after that. The Bodhisattva vow is the vow taken by Mahayana Buddhists to liberate all sentient beings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva_vow The problem is, 90% of what Sadhguru says comes from Osho. But Osho never really meant much of what he said. His talks were only devices to make sure that people don't cling to a certain set of beliefs or ideologies. So, one of his methods was to intentionally contradict himself.

@egoless probably so many reasons.. first reason, it could be just a coincidence..or even a shock of sudden awakening: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2218009/Why-shock-kill-good-news--Release-adrenaline-sudden-discovery-lead-heart-problems.html But it is too rare to even take into consideration.. Do you know most of the people in the world die in their bed? Does it mean going to bed at night is dangerous?

@How to be wise He is not only wrong, misleading and even discouraging people in a sense by saying 99% of people die during enlightenment, but he also claims that in his own ashram he pegs people down (people who are kriya yogis, according to him) when they are about to reach enlightenment so that they don't die. And this is what started my whole criticism about him in the last few months.. In the process of doing that, I found many other things, which is a long story... Don't worry, if anybody dies at the time of enlightenment, it is a rare exception.. It is not even 1%... definitely not 99% Make sure you read the following word by word because if you are Sadhguru's follower, you will feel a strong tendency to defend him, you may lose awareness for a moment, assume what is written below without fully reading it and may want to refute what I am saying without fully understanding it. The best thing for me to do here is to post an answer that I wrote in Quora. The question which was asked was "How many enlightened persons has Isha Foundation produced through its methods? " Good question! I had attended programs in Isha, attended Sadhguru’s satsangs a few times and I lived in Coimbatore for two years… I know Sadhguru since 2004 and I would like to answer this question. Let me first tell you something that Sadhguru says, which is very important for you to know: It is also written in cover of the book ‘Enlightenment - An inside story’ And in the same book he also says the following: So what do you get from this? In spite of the practitioners of Isha yoga being kriya yogis, they will still leave the body (die) when they get enlightened. But Sadhguru will not let them die but peg them down so that they don’t reach enlightenment. Or he will let it happen only when they reach a certain age. But for some reason, Sadhguru was not able to do this for Viji, his wife.(He wasn’t able to peg her down and she left her body before the consecration of Dhyanalinga). This is ridiculous!.Read this for further info: https://ksmphanindra.wordpress.com/2017/11/02/the-controversial-death-of-sadhgurus-wife-vijji/ But I know how Sadhguru got such an idea about enlightenment. He got it from Osho: In the above excerpt, Osho has stated that most of the people die during the moment of enlightenment and only very rarely few people survive. Sadhguru simple repeated Osho as he always does. Please read this answer if you need a solid evidence for the fact that he repeats Osho most of the time: Sadhguru and Osho But Osho is known for his contradictions. What Sadhguru didn’t realize is that he stated the exact opposite which is published in a different book: Osho simply confuses people so that people don’t believe in anything.I have elaborated why he contradicts himself many times: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Osho-give-contradictory-statements-at-different-times/answer/Shanmugam-P-12 But what Sadhguru says is not true at all. Let me explain a few things first. I myself went through a transformation in 2014, but I don’t call it enlightenment. I have a reason for it. When I use the word ‘enlightenment’, it only points to a concept you have about enlightenment in your mind. But what happened to me blew my mind and it was nowhere related to whatever I thought about enlightenment. The words like ecstasy, bliss or peace are not the right words to describe the reality that I am living in right now. Thats why Lao Tzu said ‘The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao’.. The more complicated theories are used to describe the absolute reality, the less they sound like the experience of it. My seeking completely ended in 2014. There was nothing to seek anything any longer. At that point, I could no longer doubt ‘Am I enlightened’ but I doubted ‘Is this enlightenment?’.. There is a difference between these two questions.. The first question ‘Am I enlightened’implies that there is still a personal limited self which is asking this question. But whatever happened to me completely broke the mental boundaries between ‘me’ and the ‘world’… There was no one to get enlightenment in the first place. But I still couldn’t stop wondering ‘Is this enlightenment’. This second question is related to the concept of enlightenment that I had all along. It didn’t fit with that concept at all. So many things happened after that and I couldn’t understand why. Usually I was very happy and energetic at work and I received some compliments from my colleagues like ‘You are the happiest man in the world’, ‘You are the only one here who is working joyfully’, ‘You are the only one who comes to work happily and goes home happily’… But I also went through some occasional mental pain and I was also faced with some old patterns of thoughts from time to time. In fact, at one point, there was an extreme mental anguish which lasted for a couple of months. But none of them touched my inner core and none of them left a trace in my psyche. I couldn’t explain these moments of occasional mental pain because neither Osho nor Sadhguru explained anything about what happens at this stage. And I never labelled my way of functioning as ‘enlightenment’ because it is just a word and it didn’t mean anything to me. After 2014 , the next three years passed like a cakewalk, as if nothing happened. Except for those occasional painful moments, my life was certainly a blessing. But I didn’t think anything about spirituality those days.. The extreme mental anguish that I talked about which lasted for a couple of months actually happened during September 2016. Only at that point, I actually started thinking what exactly happened and where I can find some explanation for it. I studied the scriptures that I never studied before. It was fun because nothing was serious in my life after the transformation. It was as if I had taken a permanent vacation from life. When I studied Advaita Vedanta, I could relate with it because it described what was happening to me more than any other tradition could describe. I read Adhi Shankara’s Bhasyas and I came across the following: Even though I didn’t label myself enlightened (I couldn’t label myself anything), the above was the only thing that could explain what was happening during those occasional periods of mental pain. When I went through many scriptures in Vedantic and Buddhist traditions, I could realize one thing: Many things about enlightenment has been generalized for all people based on their observations on a very few human beings.

Suffering under the loss of it? I thought we are all joking about it...

@Faceless I live in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu in South India

For both of you :

I am sharing an answer that I wrote in Quora. Hope people find this useful, especially the newbies in this forum: The word ‘Enlightenment’ can be defined in many different ways. We have so many words in different traditions which are synonymous with the word ‘enlightenment’. The list of words are endless and the definitions are endless too. Some people exaggerate it, some people understate it, some people say that there is no such thing called enlightenment while the majority of the world’s population haven’t even heard of it. First, let me describe enlightenment in terms of what disappears. Deep down in people’s minds, there is an underlying dissatisfaction with the way things are. People want many things to be different from the way they actually are. There is a craving for becoming something that one is not and there is a resistance to the way things are. Everyone is moving towards a goal, a destination that is in the future. The hopes of arriving at that destination seem to give some solace and if those hopes and dreams are threatened, we tend to suffer. This burning uneasiness and dissatisfaction can be likened to a fire that is burning. The extinction of this fire is enlightenment. The word ‘Nirvana’ means extinction. There are also two other words ‘moksha’ and ‘mukthi’, which literally mean ‘liberation’. These words refer to how enlightenment feels like. A typical human being is bound by various things. He is bound by his own past intentions. He is bound by his beliefs. He is bound by the opinions of other people. But deep inside the heart of every human being, there is a longing to become boundless and expansive. We try to accomplish this by accumulation; we accumulate knowledge, possession and experiences hoping that these accumulations will make us boundless. But these very accumulations cause further bondage. Now you have to protect them because losing them will essentially mean losing yourself; because you derive a sense of identity from these accumulations. A typical human being is actually in a self-made prison. But the saddest part is that the majority of the population don’t realize that they are in such a prison. I have heard a quote by some anonymous person which goes like this: “One of the greatest mental freedoms is truly not caring what anyone else thinks of you”.. Imagine the kind of freedom you will get when you no longer worry about what other people think about you. And, also imagine the kind of freedom you will get when you are no longer afraid of losing anything. Imagine the kind of freedom you will get when you no longer worry about future and past! What is usually called as enlightenment is the greatest freedom ever. It is not only a combination of all kinds of freedoms that I just talked about but it is also a freedom from the sense of a separate self. It is a permanent freedom from the story you have about you. Once a person is enlightened, he feels like a huge load has been taken off of his shoulders. There is a sense of an immense freedom which is priceless. It literally feels like escaping from a prison. Once J. Krishnamurti asked his audience if they wanted to know what his secret was. Then he revealed his secret in just one sentence. He said, “I don't care what happens”… Simply put, this is enlightenment. Nothing ultimately matters and the whole life becomes a play or a game. When we play a game with our friends, we play it without any seriousness. Even though we make sure that the rules of the games are followed and that we do what we are supposed to do in the game, we don’t lose our sleep over it (unless we are playing in a tournament). Playing your role in life as if you are just playing a game is the greatest sense of freedom. Enlightenment naturally makes you to not to care about the end result of whatever you are doing. At the end of the day, nothing ever matters. That doesn’t mean you will be irresponsible. You will just enjoy what you are doing rather than being focused on results. Your actions will be driven by intrinsic motivation. Whatever I have said so far, sounds quite logical. But I haven’t touched the core yet. The core and the essence of enlightenment is realizing that you as a separate person or entity is an illusion. You create a solid sense of self inside your mind and you define the boundaries of that self physically by your body and mentally by your story. But science and spirituality tell us that there is no such solid, consistent self. This doesn’t mean that your body and your mind doesn’t exist. But a sense of self that you derive from your body and mind is just a deep-rooted belief. Since you have this belief for such a long time, you don’t even recognize that it is a belief. This may even sound absurd or unacceptable to you simply because you have lived with this belief so long. We have built layer upon layer on this belief which makes us very difficult to see through this belief. Someone asked a question in Quora before. The question was “Can an atheist believe in spiritual enlightenment? “. The word ‘believe’ here is a bit odd.But this question comes from an assumption that spiritual enlightenment is somehow related or tied to religious beliefs. But in reality, an enlightened person is an upgraded atheist. Let me elaborate. The only thing that an atheist doesn’t believe in is the existence of a personal deity, a creator God who answers your prayers. But an atheist may still believe that his next door neighbour is a jerk and his boss is an a**h**e. An enlightened person, on the other hand, doesn’t believe in anything. He doesn’t even believe that he is separate from the existence. Once the sense of a separate self dissolves, you realize that you are existence itself. All the boundaries between you and the world simply disappear. You cease to exist as a person but you continue to exist as the existence.Realizing that you are not an entity separate from existence is enlightenment. It is not just realizing this as a fact but realizing it in your actual moment to moment experience. This is not to say that enlightenment is a special experience or an altered state of consciousness. When you are living a life as a liberated person, you simply experience the reality without any duality. The reality is felt in its purity without any distortions. Your life then becomes free-flowing, conflict-less, guilt-free, fearless, peaceful and fulfilled. Nothing is lacking anymore at the absolute level. There is a sense of innocence and genuineness in your moment to moment experience. It is quite ordinary then how enlightenment is described or thought of. So, what causes this illusion of separate self or duality? Left-brain interpreter is the culprit. The left brain interpreter refers to the construction of explanations by the left brain in order to make sense of the world by reconciling new information with what was known before. The left brain interpreter attempts to rationalize, reason and generalize new information it receives in order to relate the past to the present. The concept was first introduced by Michael Gazzaniga while he performed research on split-brain patients during the early 1970s with Roger Sperry at the California Institute of Technology.] Sperry eventually received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his contributions to split-brain research. If you just look at the above picture, one thing is clear. You left brain engages in things which require categorization. Your right brain specializes in helping you to see everything as a whole. Dr. Chris Niebauer, a neuroscientist writes in his book ‘The Neurotic’s Guide to Avoiding Enlightenment: How the Left-brain Plays Unending Games of Self-improvement’ about the left brain interpreter. Let me quote a few lines from his book: It is this left brain interpreter which also creates the duality. It categories your body and your story as a ‘me’ that is separate from the existence. Spiritual enlightenment is going beyond all the dualities. It leads one to resolve all the internal conflicts and to feel one with everything. It removes the idea that there is a separate entity inside which has to enhance itself for fulfilment. The left brain may still continue to categorize things, but they are not solidified in our consciousness and we are not urged to protect those solidified entities.

@SOUL ok cool. And since we are talking about fewer words, fewer concepts and silence here, we should end the discussion here and be silent..

@SOUL sure... And I will also ask all the Gurus to contact you to get advice on how to teach

@SOUL If there is a crowd which is making a lot of noise and if you want to make them calm down, what should you do? You should shout a bit louder than the crowd itself to say 'silence please'!... There is no other way ..

The reason why a lot of things are spoken is because there are a lot of ways people get conditioned. Enlightenment is simple but the mind is not.. The nature of an unenlightened mind is like a knot in a thread. The knot is very complicated. Enlightenment is just untying the knot and restoring it as a pure thread. I decided to write a book about Jesus simply because there are devote Christians in India conditioned by their religion. It is very very hard to get them open-minded to listen to these things. It is similar to using a thorn to remove another thorn. Watch the following video for example, you may understand what I mean:

Ok then.. Let us all just accept 'I am that I am' and close down this forum... No more books, no more Gurus and no more talk about enlightenment. Just fly a hydrogen balloon with the sentence 'I am that I am' and the whole world will be enlightened.

@Dodo thanks, I have already made a cover for my next book. But haven't started writing it yet.. It may take a few months. Here is the cover :

@Faceless Thank you

@Deep Kundalini is nothing but your natural energy.. What you say as ‘kundalini’ is the same energy that you are feeling right now. But the energy seems to be split; There are always conflicting thought patterns and tendencies.. The energy is not directed or channelled in one way. It is similar to the leaks in a water pipe.. If there is no conflict at all, then the whole energy moves in one direction and is completely synchronized with existence… The whole spiritual path is about cleaning the mess, just like how you clear all the vegetable-remains in the kitchen sink.. Its just like how the mist clears to reveal the sun... Once all the mess within is cleaned, then there is a tremendous conservation of energy.. But there is no need to focus on kundalini, chakras and things like that. I don't use the word 'kundalini' usually because it has become a fancy word now.

@Faceless I can tell you what happened to me. In July 2014, there was a complete destruction of duality. And there are two things when I say integration: 1. Certain old thought patterns occurred at times and they were emotionally challenging. It didn't affect me as it did before and there was no feeling of misery. Those are just old thought patterns which got triggered by certain situations. Such old patterns take some time to completely run out. It is similar to how the bicycle wheel continues to move forward for a while even after you stop pedalling. 2. Also, for a brief period of time, I was no longer functioning the society the same way I did. I have to get used to living in non-duality and also function in social life. It was pretty much like relearning everything. It is like creating a conscious social identity all over again but it happened very gradually over the last two years. It seems to be complete now. But these are challenges, not personal problems. They will no longer seem to affect you.