Helicopter Flying

The level of activity that’s happening with Isha in India, particularly in South India, has grown manifold. In the last 3 years, we’ve multiplied 15-20 times over. So, one commodity that is in tremendous scarcity with me is time. Time has become such a big issue. I looked at it - I’m spending so much time on the road just traveling, even though I generally push it twice the speed of the rest of the traffic on the street, on average at least.

Today, the kind of response we have across India is such that literally every door is open. If I can visit a town once, they are willing to do anything - it’s become like that. During the Ananda Alai tour of Tamil Nadu, we had major events in 23 towns in 3 months. Chennai gathered over 100,000 people and even among the medium-sized towns, none was less than 30,000. It’s been a phenomenal response. And I set up this challenge for them - I said if you enroll 10,000 people for an Inner Engineering program, which is a 3-day commitment, I will come to your town. They said, we will do it Sadhguru. I went to smaller towns and said if you enroll 5,000 people, I will come to your town. They said, we will do it. Then, among themselves, there was competition saying if this one enrolls 5,000, we’ll enroll 8,000 but we want the first date. The spirit and enthusiasm are unprecedented and infectious.

We fixed 5 cities, but we had to cancel 2 because we couldn’t fit them into our schedule. We did programs in 3 cities - Madurai for 10,035 people, Trichy for about 9,500 and Chennai for 14,157. Now Chennai is asking for another date. They’re saying if you give us another date in 2011, we’ll get 25,000; it has picked up that kind of momentum across the state. And in every little town, they’re saying we’ll enroll 5,000, please come to our town. So we set a target – in six years’ time, there should not be a single human being in Tamil Nadu who does not have at least a drop of spiritual process in their life. Doesn’t matter what the religion, caste, creed, gender - it doesn’t matter. Everybody should have it. We’re rapidly moving in that direction. So, the biggest challenge has become time and I noticed I’m wasting so much time on the road just driving. Nothing is fast enough. So I thought I’ll learn to fly a helicopter. And I’m doing that right now. Today I landed twice, took off 3-4 times. I think in another few days, I’ll be fine with flying. One must know that a helicopter is a unique machine; that is, it is not like any flying object on this planet, man-made or otherwise. It has no wings and the general parameters of aerodynamics function quite differently in a helicopter compared to anything else, either a bird or a plane.

With all the variety of things going on, I thought the helicopter would help to manage my time a little better. The rotor blades are not only going to churn up the air, we’re going to really churn up a spiritual revolution in Tamil Nadu. I have already earmarked about 62 towns. Probably in 3 months’ time, I should be hopping around Tamil Nadu. It will be extremely useful in India for whatever work we’re doing.

Chuk Chuk Chuk… Next time you hear it, maybe I’m landing on your rooftop.