From ‘mystic's musings. Sadhguru a profound mystic of our times’ by sadhguru jaggi vasudev

There’s a very beautiful Zen saying: ‘When you are ignorant, mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers, clouds are clouds, trees are trees. Once you enter the spiritual path, mountains are no more mountains, rivers are no more just rivers, clouds aren’t just clouds, trees aren’t just trees. But once you arrive, once you are Enlightened, once again mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers, clouds are clouds, trees are trees.’

When his disciple, Sanghamitra insisted that women should be allowed on the path of Dhamma that Gautama was offering to the world – when women were not yet a part of it – Gautama said, “My path will stay vibrantly alive for two thousand five hundred years, but if I allow women into it, it will last only for five hundred years.” …. “If a woman comes and sits with me, for her, more than my Buddha-hood, I will become more attractive because of her emotions and the very duality of man and woman.” It is in this context that he said that women prefer to go after the Buddha rather than the Buddha-hood. ……but it need not always be true.

….Just repetition of a mantra changes the chemisty of the system, because ultimately everything is just vibration and sound; the whole existence is just that. If you use the right sound properly, with the right amount of intensity and perseverance, it will change the chemistry of your system. ….it can cease your mind and give you a glimpse of reality. …..Without the necessary awareness, they can act like any drug, deadening the mind and causing hallucinatory states.

When there s no live Guru, mantras become an essential support. If the right kind of atmosphere, preparation, and awareness is created, a mantra can explode you into a different level of consciousness.

Seeker: Sadhguru, in the cycle of rebirth, does the child select the parents?

Sadhguru: ….your karma makes you settle down in some particular womb, with those kinds of tendencies and with those kinds of attributes…… Its not that this person is named for that person. This is not the way it works.

Dying with your family is not a great way to die. Some amount of love is good, but there are so many attachments. The last moment of your life, if you look at your son, you daughter, your wife or husband, not just love will come. So many other things will come along with it…..

….when the moment of death is approaching, those who are aware of this generally move the dying person out of the house and keep them in a north-south alignment with the head to the north ……if the body is still in the house, inside constructed atmospheres, the being does not leave the body with ease. …..north-south alignment because it further eases the disentanglement of the being from the body.

Even after clinical death has occurred, still the prana is not completely gone from the physical body. The physical body is not totally broken. So the being still tends to hover around the body; but if you place it in a north-south alignment, the being will be pulled away from the body because of the magnetic pull.

Another thing that is known in India is, when a person dies, the first thing is they tie the toes together, because if the toes are not tied together, the remaining aspect of the prana tends to leave from the Muladhara, and it also tends to become a passageway for the being to again enter the body in a partial way, if the Muladhara is open. If the anal outlet is left open, then the being will make an attempt to re-enter from this lower passage, which is not at all good for that being …….If you put your toes together, you will notice that your anal outlet is always tightly shut …..This waiting to possess the body through the Muladhara, or the anal passage, need not necessarily be by the being or the person who left the body. There are other beings who will seek such a passage.

If somebody wants to do certain occult practices where freshly-dead bodies are used, it’s always the Muladhara which is made use of because that’s the easiest passage.

….It is forty days after the conception that the being enters the body. Similarly, up to forty days, the being still takes time to completely leave the body…..even if you have burned the body, it will look for certain elements of the body like the ash or anything else, something that belongs to them, maybe their used clothes. If you do not know this, in the Hindu families, the moment the person dies, all the clothes that the person used, especially those clothes which touched the person’s body, like underclothes, are all burned. This is because the being still looks for elements of the body, maybe the sweat, maybe the smell of the body, maybe something for which it seeks again, because still the realization has not come that its over. ….If you keep the ashes in one place, there is a tendency for the being to look for that. So they are put in a river where they are spread, that way they cannot be found …..Everything possible is being done to make the being understand that its over, and its also for the living to understand that it is all over.

……On the third day after death, there is a tradition or a ritual to offer milk and water to the grave. One thing is that there is a psychological need in you to still feed them, still take care of them …..The other aspect of it is that the one who has left the body, the dead – this it not true with everybody who dies, but with certain people – when he dies in a certain unfulfilled way, or if he dies without running the course of his prarabdha karma or the allotted karma for this life, such a person could be quenched by making certain offerings.

We know bala yogis, many of them, who at the age of six or seven become Enlightened. Most of them never reach the age of twently-five or thirty….because they cannot sustain the body at this intensity of existence.

….Rudrakshas ….you can wear them all the time. You can keep them on. They have to be worn around the neck, not on the wrist. Only a certain type of person should wear them on the wrist. If you do, you have to maintain your life in a very rigid way, which is usually not possible. People in family situations should wear them around the neck, not on their wrists…..wearing rings on their thumbs in not a good thing to do. You will attract all kinds of things that are not necessary for you. …don’t wear metal on your thumbs ….Especially metals like gold and copper on the thumb will lead to attracting occult forms

Most saints also do not allow anybody to touch their feet because they’re in a certain state. Sometimes touching feet takes away too much.

…You might have noticed that every bhramhachari and almost every other inmate is wearing a copper ring ….This is so because when people go into intense sadhana, there are possibilities that they may accidentally slip out of their bodies. Just to ensure that people don’t fall out of their bodies accidentally, we fix a metal ring. …. So we always put a copper ring on their ring finger, because it’s a sensitive finger. …..there are certain nadis present in this finger. It can be activated and made to be very sensitive…..

If it is in a certain level of awareness, the disembodied being is in a certain state of pleasantness. It is this state that is referred to as heaven. These beings are in different levels of pleasantness, or you can even say certain ecstasy within themselves, because they have left their physical body in a certain state of awareness: now they have acquired a certain sweetness about them. They enjoy the sweetness for a certain period of time, a holiday, a vacation, before taking on another physical body. The vacation is what you refer to as heaven. Similarly, if people leave or die in certain states of fear, anxiety, anger or ignorance, their karmic shell will have acquired a certain kind of unpleasantness about it. This unpleasantness is what you refer to as hell. Like this, there are many layers of hell and also many layers of heaven.

These beings are drawn here, especially in my presence, which has a certain significance. At the same time, they will never be drawn into the temple because whenever we consecrate a temple, we also create a certain situation where these kinds of beings are not able to enter the temple space …..If we build a major powerful temple, a little away from the temple, another kind of temple will be built which will attract these forces. These are usually used for occult purposes.

A disembodied snake can possess a human being. In this culture it is a common knowledge called naga dosha. This can particularly affect certain layers of your skin and create a very strange sense of stillness and movement. A snake has a more substantial presence of being. That’s one reason why in this culture, people are told not to kill a snake, because it has a more substantial presence about it. In case you happen to kill a snake, it needs to be cremated or buried as we do for a human body. Similarly for the cow and crow, the being of a cow always tends to linger on around certain types of trees. The Pungai tree is one of those which attract the bodiless cows, but their period of transition is very brief. So in India it is understood that if you spend time under this particular tree, you’ll be blessed with nourishment, as cow’s milk has always been the very symbol of nourishment.

Seeker: Sadhguru, how does a disembodied being, which has no will of its own, work off its karma?

Sadhguru: It doesn’t work off karma. Karma wears off just by living…….if you just sit, breathe and live, your karma wears off. The problem is that you’re acquiring more karma than what is wearing off…..A disembodied being cannot acquire more karma. For a disembodied being, karma is wearing out very slowly.This is not the right way to express this, but let us say you have another three years of prarabdha karma left. If you leave your body with these three years of prarabdha and become disembodied, these three years may get multiplied into thirty years, or three hundred years. Karma wears out very slowly when you have not body, because there is no conscious action. Everything happens by tendencies, but you cant accumulate any new karma.

…..when a person is gentle and moves with full awareness, nothing is disturbed around him….All your agitated movements and actions, you don’t know how much disturbance they cause in the universe…..this disturbance that you cause with those kinds of movements, that is the kind of atmosphere you create around you. You create that and suffer because of it. What you create is what you have to live with. …

Seeker: Sadhguru, I have heard that people use certain devices to attract disembodied beings.

Sadhguru: …..some people misuse the fluids of a woman’s menstrual cycle to attract the really distorted ones. The fluid is applied onto a cloth or some such thing and is hung onto, generally tamarind trees, and for sure you’ll see distorted beings…….

Seeker: But Sadhguru, why a tamarind tree?

Sadhguru: Because the carbon dioxide is very high there, so it has the least disturbance in terms of life forms. None of the birds or animals will rest in a tamarind tree at night because of this. They wont go there because there is too much carbon dioxide. These kinds of beings like to hang there, because there is no physical disturbance and anyway they don’t need oxygen to breathe. …they tend to go where there is less movement. That is also why they tend to hang around in cemeteries, corners and such places, for the same reason. …If there’s a lot of movement of people, they don’t like to go there.

…..The menstrual fluid always means rebirth for them. They’re attracted by tendencies. When they sense these fluids, they think it is an opportunity to look for a new body. So a woman always becomes more susceptible to such forces and such beings when she is close or when she is menstruating. …..it draws them because in some way they sense that it is an opportunity to be reborn.

One of the reasons why in India, when a woman menstruates, she is put in a protected atmosphere, why she’s asked to chant God’s name, why she is not allowed to go out to certain places or do certain things is because she is susceptible to so many forces. As it is, physiologically and psychologically, she becomes a little fragile at this time. This makes her available that way also…..They can easily possess her. The opportunity or the possibility of these beings possessing a woman during this time is so much more. They may not be completely possessed, but many women may just get influenced by their tendencies if they hover around….act a little crazy or aggressive …..just the application of vibhuthi at certain points of the body and showering two or three times a day creates a protection ….the fluids must not remain on the body. That’s the rule. Twice a day, she must have a head bath. She just sits in one place; she doesn’t expose herself to too many situations; she keeps her exposure to a minimum level ……to put water over your head, to cleanse the aura….. After a bath, your aura is not the same as before…. It cleanses; it makes you mor receptive and less available to these forces.

See, it is not that they appear and disappear. Some of them are dense so they become visible. Its just your capability to see or not. At a certain moment, in a certain state of receptivity, you may see them.

A person who is a meditator – when some quality of meditativeness has come – cannot be possessed by anything. Its not possible, but they may create terror in you just by appearing in very distorted form.

Seeker: If celestial or disembodied beings disturb you, whats the best way to handle them? ….

Sadhguru: Its simple. If one is meditative, they need not bother about all that. … Its not a question of ignoring it; it will not even come into your experience.

Suppose that in your family somebody died halfway through their prarabdha. They still have a very strong prarabdha and you happen to be wearing their clothes. Unknowingly, they will come at you. Its not that they are seeking you; it is just that these clothes carry – in some way – a part of their body and energy. They tend to gravitate in that direction. This is a part of our tradition, that if a person dies, you should never wear their rings. ….you wear their rings on your ring finger, it becomes very easy for that being to enter you. You become very accessible. He’s not trying to torment you. He’s not trying to do anything. He has no such intentions. He will just function according to his tendencies, which will be a torture for you in some way. Otherwise, the situation of some disembodied being coming and tormenting you or even becoming visible to you does not arise. Such a possibility is very remote …..Only if in some way it is connected to you, and only if the prarabdha is very strong, that being will gravitate around you and you’ll be able to feel it. Otherwise, it is too subtle for you to feel, unless you have raised yourself to a certain level of awareness ….When you have utter clarity about where you are in the present dimension, the next dimension reveals itself to you.

The uniqueness of the Dhyanalinga is that all the seven chakras are established. Lingadhanda, a copper tube with solidified mercury in it, has all the seven chakras established in their full flow ….

In my previous life as Sadhguru Shri Bhramha, I was known as Chakreshwara ….He was known as Chakreshwara because he exhibited certain qualities of his total mastery over the chakras.

….in South India, there are five Lingas for the five elements in nature. These five Lingas are created for sadhana, not for worship ….And the most fundamental sadhana in yoga is bhootha shuddhi. ….If you want to do sadhana for the element of water, you go to Thiruvanaikaval. For space, you go to Chidambaram. To do different sadhana, different types of temples were built. …The tradition always told you that if you go to the temple, you must sit there for a while, because these temples are energy centers.

Sadhguru Shri Bhramha …..Coimbatore…the place where he attained samdhi and shed his body still exists; it is very vibrant, it pulsates with energy ….this place, at the top of the seventh hill, just at the edge of the mountain where wild winds blow constantly, says everything about this man…….

If you have a stone idol in your house, every day pooja must happen. If an idol gets damaged, or if you don’t take care of it, the energy will start receding. If you keep idols with receding energies in your house, it will start sucking people in and it will cause harm to you ….In the tradition, they have always told you that even if a little bit of damage occurs to the idol, you should throw it into a river or a well, because receding energies are not good for people.